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Published: November 17th 2009
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We officially welcomed the cold weather in Korea this week, and what a change it was! Last weekend we were walking around in t-shirts all weekend and this week I'm desperate for a winter jacket! Luckily by the weekend, the sun came back (the wind didn't go away, but at least it wasn't tooo cold!)!
Since we were both feeling better we decided to finally go hiking on Saturday. We had been noticing that at one particular stop of the subway, there were always hikers getting on and off so we decided to get off there and try our luck! We found a trail, and started our climb up to the peak at 801.5m. It was a great hike, and the trail we chose seemed to be less traveled and we didn't pass many hikers..until we reached the peak that is! (apparently we didn't take the 'popular' trail!). Along the hike up, we did run into two Korean men who had stopped for a lunch break and offered us some of their Makeli, which is an alcoholic drink made from...you guessed it! rice! (and not very good, at that!). It somehow seemed wrong to be drinking while exerting yourself on
a hiking trail, so we declined!
At the top of this mountain, the view was amazing! You could see all of Yangsan in one direction and Busan in the other direction! The long climb was well worth it! There was a rock at the very top with some writing on it and the altitude and everyone was taking turns getting their pictures with it, so we figured we'd do the same...you know, try to fit in! We sat down on a large rock to eat our lunch of kimbap rolls (rice, ham, radish,carrott and some other things wrapped in seaweed) and a nice Korean man sitting next to us offered us some of his squash crackers (which might sound unappealing, but were actually verrryyy tasty!).
We took a different way back down which was a much more groomed trail and packed with hikers. We made it down in about half the time it took us to get to the top! Along the way down, we followed the remains of the old fortress wall from way back in the day. We also visited the Beomeosa (bomosa) Temple, which is best viewed in the fall.
Sunday we had planned to
go to another temple Hongbeopsa, with a bunch of foreigners from Yangsan for a Korean Mask Dance performance. Once a month this temple puts on special activities for foreigners only! So off we went to this temple, expecting to sit for 2 hours and enjoy the performance put on by the Koreans. Well, we were in for quite the surprise, when after the first dance (the crane dance), all the foreigners were put into groups, given hand socks and we told to 'take your coats off because you will work very strong. This is a heavy dance for you lose weight'. Wait, you mean WE are doing the dancing! bahaha. Not what we had bargained for, but it turned out to be sooo much fun! The music for this dance was just everyone chanting over and over again 'dong dong dong dong ul-su' (or something that sounded like that!). The instructor was so patient and we were all so terrible at this dance! But after about an hour of dancing with our hand socks, hopping from one foot to the other and laughing uncontrollably, we had the dance down pat! At that point, they gave each of us masks, and
then we had to perform the dance with the masks on! That was a whole other chore because you had no periferal vision and breathing was tricky in a mask with no nose or mouth holes! The upside to the masks was that you could look as stupid as you wanted and no one really knew who you were!!
Afterwards, they fed us fresh fruit and sompyeon (round rice cakes with a peanutty-tasting centre) and we promised to be back next month for their event, Kimchi making! Afterwards we went to this amazing Italian restaurant in Gimhae, a small town beside Busan, for real, authentic Italian pizza! yummy!
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